Reading Wars
Phonetics vs. Whole Language Theory: An Essay Concerning American Politics
John Kerry is a flip-flopper.
Any decent fifth generation child of privilege and wealth will tell you that when you ask why Kerry was a weaker candidate in the 2004 presidential election when he lost to the man called Dubbya, but what that person may not be able to tell you is that this simple criticism is a surprisingly accurate portrayal of the American left. Left-wingers today carry a paradoxical stigma: the ability to critically analyze both sides of an issue causes gray matter to arise somewhere in between the black and white of injustice of the status quo and the impossibility of the absolute ideal, causing both a great strength and a great weakness. That is, the stronger the penchant to devote real thought and energy into Existential Problem X is, the weaker the desire to take a decisive stance becomes, because such a person is able to weigh the pros and cons of both sides. Dubbya characterizes what seems to be a position of absolute strength (that is only superficial), his decisions a result of largely unthought opinions that produce a great ‘moral’ clarity seen only in blind religious zealots. (Aristotle himself inveighed against the unthinking opinion, but what did he ever do for American society than provide the governing principals for, more or less, everything?) Conservatives thrive on the dualism between the haves and have-nots. They are Augustus Caesars who must protect their own and dupe the rest into thinking their rights and freedoms are protected while simultaneously taking those rights and freedoms away. And this is directly related to the way reading is taught in American schools today.
“Reading Wars” has one major fallacy in its analysis of the two warring methods for teaching reading (phonics and whole-language): it never explicitly states the painful though obvious truth that not everyone is born equal intellectually. In essence, Nietszche had it right. Every society exists on the merit of the handful of geniuses it produces, regardless of how progressive and sophisticated its education system may be. Steven Pinker, an MIT scholar and Chomsky disciple whose work focuses on the development of language in the human brain, framed the conflict concisely in his analysis of the intelligence of chimpanzees. Although you can train the monkey as many scientists have done in the past century in a vain attempt to prove their intellectual capabilities, it does not mean the monkey is smart; it means it is trained. The conclusion is that there is something more than simple training in growing as a human being who according to the Genesis story is better than and has dominion over the wild beasts of the field. Enter the failure of the American school to teach reading comprehension to multitudes of students. Because of an overemphasis on phonetical training and a mystical belief that such training in turn magically leads to comprehension, many American students can read, and yet, they cannot read. Word-calling is worth next to nothing. Subtlety is a lost art to students taught solely by phonics, but understanding and appreciating literary subtlety is exactly the end goal of education as well as the noblest end of mankind.
This is not of course to say that I am comparing American students to monkeys or calling them less than human. What I am claiming here is that phonetical training is a tool of the right-wingers in America to maintain the status quo, that is, protect their privileged status in society and trick the have-nots in America into thinking they are drawing the biggest lot rather than the smallest. Conservatives who advocate phonetical training in essence advocate the training of American students like monkeys to perform menial jobs. They learn to hate literature and learning because they do not understand it but also become just competent enough to work a cash register and sell the haves of the world their Big Macs. Students who are naturally bright will learn under any circumstance, so sacrificing the teaching of reading comprehension to phonics in no way undermines the replenishing of America’s elite conservatives with a new generation. Judging from the limited information in the article, whole-language theory in contrast at least seems to offer a higher success rate in instilling a genuine love for literature and personal growth in American students, given that for whatever reasons there will always be high-achieving and low-achieving students no matter what system is in place.
I am in many ways torn like any good flip-flopper on the issue of how to most effectively teach reading, being both a product of a Great Books education as well as a child of the Classics. The latter has taught me that rote memorization and discipline produces the building blocks to higher learning and comprehension, but the former has taught me that rote memorization is not the end of learning of itself. Superficially it would seem that I am having it both ways in this by claiming that a combination of two polar extremes or seeking some sort of middle ground would solve the reading comprehension problem in America’s schools, but it not so straightforward as that for the simple fact that America’s schools already use a combined model to teach reading, a model that is still failing anyway. Somewhere in between elementary school and high school there is an undefined paradigm shift between the two schools of thought: certainly a first-grader does not read Tolstoy any more than a twelfth-grader reads Dr. Seuss, and rightly so. The overarching point in this conflict can be seen in the irony of the No Child Left Behind Act. There is no possible way that no child will ever be left behind given the myriad inherent inequalities among human beings, but at the same time, we as a society must never stop trying to educate our children since education is, again, what makes us human. The difference between left-wingers and Dubbya is that Dubbya misguidedly and ignorantly believes that he can create a society in which no child is left behind whereas the left-wingers believe that the fight to attempt a quality education for every single child is simultaneously futile and entirely sublime, like Odin and the Norse gods who know there is no winning the fight ultimately but admirably fight the good fight anyway.
John Kerry is a flip-flopper.
Any decent fifth generation child of privilege and wealth will tell you that when you ask why Kerry was a weaker candidate in the 2004 presidential election when he lost to the man called Dubbya, but what that person may not be able to tell you is that this simple criticism is a surprisingly accurate portrayal of the American left. Left-wingers today carry a paradoxical stigma: the ability to critically analyze both sides of an issue causes gray matter to arise somewhere in between the black and white of injustice of the status quo and the impossibility of the absolute ideal, causing both a great strength and a great weakness. That is, the stronger the penchant to devote real thought and energy into Existential Problem X is, the weaker the desire to take a decisive stance becomes, because such a person is able to weigh the pros and cons of both sides. Dubbya characterizes what seems to be a position of absolute strength (that is only superficial), his decisions a result of largely unthought opinions that produce a great ‘moral’ clarity seen only in blind religious zealots. (Aristotle himself inveighed against the unthinking opinion, but what did he ever do for American society than provide the governing principals for, more or less, everything?) Conservatives thrive on the dualism between the haves and have-nots. They are Augustus Caesars who must protect their own and dupe the rest into thinking their rights and freedoms are protected while simultaneously taking those rights and freedoms away. And this is directly related to the way reading is taught in American schools today.
“Reading Wars” has one major fallacy in its analysis of the two warring methods for teaching reading (phonics and whole-language): it never explicitly states the painful though obvious truth that not everyone is born equal intellectually. In essence, Nietszche had it right. Every society exists on the merit of the handful of geniuses it produces, regardless of how progressive and sophisticated its education system may be. Steven Pinker, an MIT scholar and Chomsky disciple whose work focuses on the development of language in the human brain, framed the conflict concisely in his analysis of the intelligence of chimpanzees. Although you can train the monkey as many scientists have done in the past century in a vain attempt to prove their intellectual capabilities, it does not mean the monkey is smart; it means it is trained. The conclusion is that there is something more than simple training in growing as a human being who according to the Genesis story is better than and has dominion over the wild beasts of the field. Enter the failure of the American school to teach reading comprehension to multitudes of students. Because of an overemphasis on phonetical training and a mystical belief that such training in turn magically leads to comprehension, many American students can read, and yet, they cannot read. Word-calling is worth next to nothing. Subtlety is a lost art to students taught solely by phonics, but understanding and appreciating literary subtlety is exactly the end goal of education as well as the noblest end of mankind.
This is not of course to say that I am comparing American students to monkeys or calling them less than human. What I am claiming here is that phonetical training is a tool of the right-wingers in America to maintain the status quo, that is, protect their privileged status in society and trick the have-nots in America into thinking they are drawing the biggest lot rather than the smallest. Conservatives who advocate phonetical training in essence advocate the training of American students like monkeys to perform menial jobs. They learn to hate literature and learning because they do not understand it but also become just competent enough to work a cash register and sell the haves of the world their Big Macs. Students who are naturally bright will learn under any circumstance, so sacrificing the teaching of reading comprehension to phonics in no way undermines the replenishing of America’s elite conservatives with a new generation. Judging from the limited information in the article, whole-language theory in contrast at least seems to offer a higher success rate in instilling a genuine love for literature and personal growth in American students, given that for whatever reasons there will always be high-achieving and low-achieving students no matter what system is in place.
I am in many ways torn like any good flip-flopper on the issue of how to most effectively teach reading, being both a product of a Great Books education as well as a child of the Classics. The latter has taught me that rote memorization and discipline produces the building blocks to higher learning and comprehension, but the former has taught me that rote memorization is not the end of learning of itself. Superficially it would seem that I am having it both ways in this by claiming that a combination of two polar extremes or seeking some sort of middle ground would solve the reading comprehension problem in America’s schools, but it not so straightforward as that for the simple fact that America’s schools already use a combined model to teach reading, a model that is still failing anyway. Somewhere in between elementary school and high school there is an undefined paradigm shift between the two schools of thought: certainly a first-grader does not read Tolstoy any more than a twelfth-grader reads Dr. Seuss, and rightly so. The overarching point in this conflict can be seen in the irony of the No Child Left Behind Act. There is no possible way that no child will ever be left behind given the myriad inherent inequalities among human beings, but at the same time, we as a society must never stop trying to educate our children since education is, again, what makes us human. The difference between left-wingers and Dubbya is that Dubbya misguidedly and ignorantly believes that he can create a society in which no child is left behind whereas the left-wingers believe that the fight to attempt a quality education for every single child is simultaneously futile and entirely sublime, like Odin and the Norse gods who know there is no winning the fight ultimately but admirably fight the good fight anyway.
posted by David Jones | 18:43
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